


The Promise

by PlainJaneEyre



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1284967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlainJaneEyre/pseuds/PlainJaneEyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is gone, apparently dead, and John is struggling without him. <br/>A slow burning Johnlock romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flashbacks

**Author's Note:**

> This will start out a little dark for John, but we have to go down before things can get better.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has flashbacks.

I can feel the mist of memory drifting over me, dragging me backwards into yet another flashback. If I was thinking medically, which I'm not, I would diagnose myself with PTSD. It's what Ella would say I have. But it's not the bodies, not the hot, glistening sand that haunts me. It's not being shot. Nor is it even the danger you and I got ourselves into. It's not being strapped to a bomb by Moriarty, it's not being gassed at Baskerville. 

No, it's something far more insidious, something more quietly traumatic. It's these little domestic scenes between you and I, meaningless in their own right, that roll over me in hot waves and incapacitate me with pain.

I've tried so hard to block out your face, your unseeing eyes, your blood covered hair from...from after the fall. They still haunt me sometimes, when I wake up from yet another nightmare, panting, remembering your still warm hand lying in mind, no pulse. But I block it out, mostly, the way I've blocked out Afghanistan as much as I can. It's the only way to carry on, to be able to continue.

But these little domestic scenes, talking in the kitchen while you dissect a liver, making you tea (black, two sugars), watching the telly while you laugh... I can't afford to lose those. I can't afford to lose you. So I let the flashbacks carry me away, torture me with images of you, because it's the only way you can be here with me, still exist. It's a pained existence, but it's better than nothing, isn't it? You're my best friend, it's what I have to do. Were my best friend. You're in only in my head now.

This scene hurts especially, more than most. You were lying on your bed, after one of our early encounters with the woman. Drugging an addict! She had no idea what that could do to you. I never could forgive her for that. But you liked her, didn't you?

Everyone had found it so funny, you being drugged. They were snapping pictures and videos with their camera phones and giggling. Idiots. I can see why you didn't like them.

Although, to be fair, you never were very nice to them. You never were very nice to anyone, actually. I can imagine what you'd say to that. You'd turn around from your computer, and raise one eyebrow. "Sociopath," you'd say, and then you'd return to work. But you weren't a sociopath, you weren't. Even if you did leave me this way.

Greg helped me get you upstairs to your bed. You're heavier than you look, lanky as you are. Greg likes you, you know. Liked you. God it's hard, speaking about you in the past tense. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.

So I was watching you sleep. That's where this flashback usually starts. Not in a creepy way. It's not like that between you and me. We're just best friends. Flatmates. But I didn't want to leave you alone while you slept off that drug. Who knows what the drug would do to you? I don't trust her, your woman.

Oh yes. That's one good thing about flashbacks. You really can see it, it's not just a memory. I can see you so clearly, passed out on that bed. Your face was uncomfortable, tense. And you looked so young, vulnerable. You really do have such absurd eyelashes, Sherlock. I bet, if you wanted, you could make anyone in the world fall in love with you. I've seen you flirt before. You're really kind of seductive. To other people, I mean. But to make them fall in love with you, all you'd have to do is sleep. You look so human.

Oh, here we go. You're waking up a little bit. I doubt you'd remember this part, you were still pretty drugged. Here, you're talking. God I've missed your voice, Sherlock.

"John," you murmur groggily.

"Mmm?" 

"C'mere," you say, your words slurring together a little bit. You're working so hard to open those eyes of yours, but your eyelids keep slamming back down.

I have no control over my movements in this memory (it's a flashback, after all, just an endless loop), but my past self walks over to you and sits on the edge of your bed. My past self gently picks up one of your pale, long hands. You can almost see the blue in your hands, you're so pale. We ought to make you eat more, once you've recovered from this. But for now, got to get a pulse. Heartbeat means you're alive, you're well, you're safe with me. I can feel the soft pounding of blood in your wrist, so different than the silence after... But no. I won't think of that now. I'm a doctor now, and you're my patient.

"John," you ask again, a little drowsily.

"I'm here," I say, reassuringly. 

"I want you to promise me something," you mumble, your words blurring together. 

"Of course," I say. At the time, I just want you to go back to sleep, to rest. This is wearing you out. Besides, what more can I promise you, what more can I give? I'll kill a man for you, I'll stay with you even after I'm strapped to a bomb and threatened with death. You know this. I'm addicted to you, there's no use denying it. Even when you're dead, I can't get you out of my head. 

Your eyes finally manage to open. "Promise you won't hate me." Hate you? At the time I couldn't think of anything in the world that would make me hate you. "No matter what I do to you." Were you already planning this then, Sherlock? Did you already know this was how it was going to end? Were you trying to warn me, to let me know so it wouldn't be as much of a shock? Because it didn't work Sherlock, it didn't work. "Promise me," your voice is fading away into unconsciousness, but your eyes are still locked on mine, desperate, unhappy. 

"I promise, Sherlock. Now rest a little bit more." Your eyes look relieved now. You nod slightly, and you slip back away, away from me.

I'm thrown back out of the flashback violently, back to reality. I let out a tiny, anguished noise. Breathe. Just breathe. That's what the therapists teach you when you get back from the war, shot in the shoulder and prone to a psychosomatic limp and panic attacks. But it doesn't help, not really. It's just a coping strategy, a facade. Putting wallpaper over a rotting wall. Looks better, doesn't fix it.

This room has nothing in it. It's been six months, Sherlock. I've done everything I'm supposed to do. I've got a new flat, I couldn't bear ever going back to Baker Street again. Not without you. I've even got a job. When the flashbacks or the panic attacks start, I lock the door to my office and pretend I'm filing papers. Makes the patients' appointments run a little behind, but all doctors run late. Just for different reasons. I even go to see Ella once a week. We're not making any progress. 

I still haven't unpacked any of my things. Only the gun and the computer have been taken out. The clothes still remain folded in the boxes. I even place them back in there after I do laundry. Pathetic, really. I don't really have many things, anyway. All of our stuff was yours, Sherlock. I have two measly boxes. It never felt like nothing when we were in Baker Street, but that's because you had so many things. You were always so over brimming with life. Microscopes cluttering up the table, skulls on the mantle. 

This place feels like a tomb.


	2. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John wakes up from yet another nightmare.

I wake up disoriented, hands gripping like claws onto the sheets, blankets tangled up around my legs and hanging halfway off the bed. It takes me a few minutes to remember that I'm not in Baker Street, and several more painful minutes before I remember why I'm in this tomb-like room instead. It slaps me like new everyday, Sherlock. It never fades. 

It's the most beautiful kind of torture, really. If you had opened up my head, dissected all the little things that make me tick and scientifically catalogued the best method to torture me, you would have found this. I like to pretend that you are doing this to me purposefully, a twisted sort of science experiment like the gas at the Baskerville labs. I wouldn't mind being your lab rat, no. Not if it meant you were still here, still alive, and all I had to do was wait long enough, be a good enough test subject, and you would come back to me. 

And your torture is so elegant, you carve me open so sweetly, Sherlock. I'm your best experiment, because I can't bear for you to stop, can't bear to lose you again, even just out of my head. It's my darkest secret: I don't want closure. I want you to stay with me, haunting me with flashbacks and those few sweet minutes every morning when I don't remember you're gone. Don't tell Ella. 

The nightmares, though, those I could do without. There's nothing sweet about that agony. Last night, I dreamt the same dream again, the one that's been cycling in my head for weeks now. You had fallen, and I desperately tried to find your heartbeat while the black blood seeped out of your head, staining those riotous curls. The more blood that seeped out, the more you became like just an outline of yourself, a shadow. If I could only find the faintest pulse, anything, the blood would stop that slow seep and you would stop losing yourself. I searched and searched but I couldn't find it. And in the end, all that remained was an outline, drawn in black marker on the pavement, where you used to be. 

I try to shake off these morbid thoughts. It's not doing any good to pretend that I failed you by not finding your pulse. I failed you a different way, didn't I? That one is the more fatal failure. Why didn't you give me a sign, just one word, Sherlock? I couldn't figure it out the way you could, from subtle hints and actions. If I had known, I would have taken such good care of you, I never would have let this happen. I haul myself out of bed and lumber over to the bathroom. 

My limp has been coming back, Sherlock. Would you make fun of me for that? No, I don't think you would. You never really did. When I first met you, you easily picked out the thing that was most shameful to me at the time. The injury with no cause, all in my head. But you never mocked me for it. You just went around trying to fix it for me. I could use you to fix me again, Sherlock. Other people would never imagine that you'd do a thing like that. But you're more caring then you let on, aren't you?

That was a good time, our first night together when you cured my limp, wasn't it? A good memory. Oh dear. I hear how that sounded. Not like that. It wasn't like that, not with us. 

It was the most exciting time I'd had since I'd gotten back from the war. I was immediately loyal to you. I guess I could already see how much you were going to mean to me. I defended you against the drug search. In retrospect, I should have seen that you actually have quite an addict's personality. But I was too enamored of you to recognize that. In a platonic way, obviously. People were always mistaking us for a couple, do you remember? Even that first night. So I feel like I have to throw these little disclaimers, reminders, in. Even if it's in my head, and there's no one to remind except myself. You were married to your wok, and I'm not gay. 

I even shot a man for you. You were going to take one of his pills, commit suicide, essentially. You denied it later, but you were, weren't you? You never could bear to lose, to not be clever.

That's not why you did it later though, right? Tell me that's not why. Tell me that it wasn't just the boredom of having killed Moriarty, your greatest enemy. I don't think I could bear it, if that was it. That would be real sociopath behavior. 

No, it can't be. My heart is pounding so fast now and my mouth feels dry and cottony, just from considering it. You called me, after all. You told me that this was your note, your apology, your goodbye. No sociopath would do that. 

Remember when you asked me to imagine what I would say if I was on the edge of suicide? That was our first case again. I told you that I would beg God to let me live. Didn't really have to imagine much on that one. You told me no, that I should imagine what I would say if I was very very clever instead. You wanted some hint to help you solve the case, and in the case of the Pink Lady there was one. But it's not always clever, there's not always some hidden message. I should know. 

And you should too, now. There's no secret hints in your goodbye either. The words have been seared into my brain, I can still hear them. We can discard all that about you being fake, both of us know that's not true. I don't know why you said it, but it doesn't matter. But the apology in there, that's real. The goodbye is definitely real. You're not a sociopath. But I don't think you left me any hints, not the way the Pink Lady did. Or if there is cleverness, I can't understand it, you should have known that. 

Ugh, this is so pointless. Standing here in the bathroom, staring at my own reflection, bickering about your word choice in your suicide note, none of that is going to bring you back. You're gone.


	3. The Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John visits Sherlock's grave.

There's a pile of wilted flowers still lying there from last week. I'm clutching another bouquet so tightly that my hands hurt. I don't pay much attention to what flowers I get you, I just buy them impulsively off the street. You never mentioned if you had a favorite flower, so I just buy whatever is being sold. I like to pretend that it's a coincidence, that I just saw some nice flowers and decided that I should come visit you. I think that it would be worse if I planned it out, admitted that I end up here every week without fail. This way, I can imagine a level of detachment I don't really feel. 

It's been a while now. Almost nine months, practically. So it's sort of pathetic that I still come here every week. I don't even want to contemplate how much money I've invested in buying you flowers. Flowers you don't even like.

Today I bought you some daffodils, for the beginning of spring. I can see how you would have crinkled up your nose at them. They are pretty odd looking flowers. And the yellow looks far too bright against the white marble of your grave. But bollocks, Sherlock. You don't get to choose your own flowers now. Not after the way you left me. And I like daffodils. 

This is ridiculous, having a fight inside my head with you about flowers. There are so many other more important things to be angry about. 

It's drizzling today. It's still only early spring, and the color seems to seep out of the trees as it rains. There's none of the smell of hope or rebirth, the way there sometimes is in spring. The rain just seems to gently plod along, not enough to quench the aching thirst of the plants, but too much to be pleasant to stand in. You would call all this sentimental drivel. "Stick to the facts," you would tell me. 

Normally, I would just retrieve the withered flowers from the past week, slide the new ones into place, and get out of here, practically sprinting. I don't enjoy being here, not at all. I don't feel like you're even here, the way I do when I'm in flashback or dreaming. I guess I just can't connect you, who was always so full of life, to this damp chilled ground. I don't want to imagine you down there. So why then do I come? Maybe it's some sick sort of obligation. 

But this week, it's different. Poor Ella has been growing increasingly frustrated with me. She doesn't tell me that, but I can see it in her eyes. It's no fun having a patient who can't admit anything of meaning and still can't let go of the past. Once, in the grips of some deep stupor and anguish, I had admitted that there was something that I had never told anyone and I deeply regretted that, now that you were gone. That piqued her interest, and she's been trying to get it out of me for months. Lately, she's seem to have given up on me ever telling her, and instead told me to talk to you at your grave. (She doesn't know how I talk to you in my head, see.) But it does seem more fitting here, somehow. More symbolic.

And more final.

I clear my throat and open my mouth to begin. The sounds breaks the silence awkwardly. 

"Sherlock," I say. My voice sounds gravelly to my own ears. I cough slightly, hoping that'll help. It doesn't.

"These are prepared words, Sherlock," I say solemnly. Oh god. I can't keep doing this. I could never have said this while you were alive, and I can't say it now. You never would have accepted it. You would have looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights, and politely demurred. You would have done it carefully, politely, because we were friends, whatever you said at Baskerville. But I would have lost you if I had said it. And I couldn't bear to lose you then, and I can't bear to lose you again now. So I veer off the script. 

"I miss you," I say simply. Then, my voice cracking, "If you could just do one more miracle, just one more for me, I'd really appreciate it. Just... Don't be dead. Don't really be dead."

It's not safe to allow myself to think that way very often, to imagine that you're still alive. I saw your body, I went to your funeral. You're gone. But there's still that little voice inside my head, the one who thinks you're still a magician, still capable of anything. That you'll come back, reveal it all to be a slight of hand trick.

I wouldn't even be mad if you did that. I wouldn't be angry that you've turned me into this wreck of a person, left me alone with my anguish. I would just be so grateful that you came back. 

I would never ask you for more than you can give. I would just be so content, so happy with anything that you wanted. Before you... Before you died, I was so angry with you. I was angry because you didn't seem to have feelings, because you didn't seem to care about anyone. But you obviously do have a lot of feelings. And if you could just not be dead, I promise I'll always be here for you, I'll always support you. I won't ask for anything else.

Dammit, Sherlock. You're making me cry now. I'm a soldier, and we're not supposed to cry. But I'm sitting down now, in the cold mud, crying just a little bit. No one would be able to tell, because of the rain. 

I let myself sit there for a few minutes, eyes closed, and taste the intermingling of tears and rain running down my face. Then I stand up and brush myself off. I pick up the bedraggled, wilted flowers from last week, and leave.


	4. Bond Boys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John watch a James Bond movie.

We're sitting on the sofa, watching a classic James Bond. You're deeply engrossed in it now, despite mocking it all the way through the first hour. You laugh at all the wrong parts (I'll admit, that dead body was notably fake looking), and spoil the plot twist by asking me why no one has figured it out yet. (It's only obvious to you, Sherlock.) And yet for someone who is so unable to keep his mouth shut, you're an awfully nice movie companion. 

We each have a tall, delicate glass of red wine, and you're hogging the popcorn bowl, despite mocking me for making it beforehand. I debated the wine for a while, uncertain whether I should I give alcohol to a former drug addict, but you answered that for me.

You snuck up behind me in that silent way of yours, and whispered right next to my ear that it should be fine, that alcohol never was your "pick poison." Scared me half to death. I think you liked that though. Surprising people, I mean. Always a flair for the dramatic. 

I got a really nice wine for the occasion. Probably more expensive than was truly necessary, to be honest. You wouldn't think that red wine would go very well with popcorn, but somehow it does. The salt intermingles pleasantly with the velvet of the wine, and it somehow fits both you and James Bond very nicely. 

It's only a flashback, I know, but it's so nice to pretend. To just pretend for a few minutes that I really am sitting on that sofa, you perched besides me, intently watching Bond.

As a confession: I can't honestly say I watched that movie very carefully that night. I can't recall even the title now, let alone the plot. Mostly, I just watched you watching the movie. You really enjoyed it greatly. It was one of the few normal human behaviors I've ever seen you enjoy. James Bond! How conventional of you, Sherlock. 

Ella says that I need to take charge of my flashbacks, not just be paralyzed in them. She thinks that I should try to escape them, or "visualize" my actions another way, instead of just drifting along like some sort of shade, repeating history. She's probably right. But she doesn't understand how being a shade, a ghost, can be simultaneously so painful and so pleasant. 

All I want to do right now is sit here and watch you cram popcorn in your mouth. But I'll try, I'll try to move outside the scripted history like she told me. If only so I can tell her next appointment that I really am trying, and she won't look so disappointed in me. 

I struggle a little bit. Flashbacks aren't like other memories, that you're free to reimagine and manipulate however you want. Flashbacks are sealed into your brain, impossible to escape, to change.

But I try anyway. I'll start simply. I'll just try to take some popcorn from your bowl. This tiny action is like tearing off mountains of chains. 

I'm quite literally shaking and sweating now, both in the flashback and real life. I'm glad I'm at home, instead of the office. This would be too hard to explain, and some of the staff are already a bit concerned about me. 

You turn and look at me. "Alright?" you ask. 

This is very much not on the script of the flashback. Nowhere during the movie did you ask if I was alright. 

I manage a small nod. You look vaguely concerned.

"You're trembling and sweating," you state matter-of-factly. "Are you running a fever?" 

You press a long, pale hand to my forehead. You never really touched me much, not in real life. You weren't a very touchy kind of person. And yet here you are, touching me. And I know it's not real, that it's just a distorted flashback, but it feels awfully real, to me.

"No fever," you murmur, removing your hand. 

I wish your hand was still on me, Sherlock. Not in a creepy way, don't worry. Your hand is just nice and cool and somehow both soft and firm in just the right way. And... It smells nice. There's a hint of the salt from the popcorn and the wine, and also your skin. Your skin smells like your aftershave and cigarette smoke and some abrasive chemical and also just... You. 

Maybe it is a little bit in a creepy way, actually. It wouldn't be the first time. It's not like it matters now, anyway. 

You're studying me now, instead of the movie. Looking at me with those intense eyes. It's unfair, those eyes of yours. They're too pretty, they belong on a woman. But they're shrewdly calculating too. They see everything. 

So you must have seen this too. It's just silly wishful thinking to imagine that you overlooked something so obvious about me. Anything else than this is just fantasy. 

It occurs to me now that since you only belong inside my head at this point, I could just pick up your hand. Just like that. I could pretend that you flushed slightly and looked away. I could make you start muttering facts, the way you do when you're nervous, and I could tell you that it's alright, that there's nothing to be worried about. And eventually, you could relax. You would give me that little half smile you reserve only for me, and we'd hold hands casually, like it was no big deal. And we'd watch James Bond and laugh at the absurdity of it and drink wine and hold hands like it was nothing. It's the only the holding hands part that isn't real, after all. That one tiny little movement that would change the whole meaning.

I consider it for a few minutes. But no. I can't. It's not fair to you, Sherlock. I don't want to manipulate you, don't want you to do anything you wouldn't have done. It didn't happen then, so I can't allow myself to imagine it now.

There never was anything between us. We were just friends. 

"Are you alright?" you ask again.

No Sherlock, I'm not alright. You're dead and you've left me all alone and I'm not okay. I'm not.

"Yeah, I'm fine." My words come out slightly garbled from the force of talking around the script of the flashback. "I just felt funny for a second."

You look at me disbelievingly for a few seconds, but then turn back to the movie. "Popcorn?" you offer. 

"Sure," I say. I take a handful, and just like that we're back on script. I feel like crying, but people don't cry about James Bond much.


End file.
